Category: community engagement

We have released a small preview of some of the documentary work coming out of the UNSETTLED project. This clip features images from interviews conducted with residents of the town of Beltana, a “ghost town” in the FLinders Ranges region of South Australia. In these interviews, residents are discussing the experience of living in the town, and reflecting on historical images of Beltana from the State Library of South Australia.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been working with Dea Morgain on a project in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The Flinders is an incredible area – on the edge of the outback, surrounded by saltbush and salt-lakes, the Ranges are these massive crusts that rise out of the plains. The Flinders are areas of immense importance to the Indigenous people of that area, the Adnyamathanha people, and they were also the site of very intense colonial usage in the 19th century.

Given the region is filled with ghost towns and the crumbling remains of 19th century buildings, our project takes the figure of colonial ruin as a way in to re-assessing the stories we as Australians tell ourselves about our colonial past. We’re partnering with the State Library of South Australia and the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association, and plan to exhibit the project at the State Library in Adelaide in 2017.

We have been offered MATCH funding from the Australian Cultural Fund, who will match whatever we raise from a crowdfunding campaign up to $10,000 – providing we hit the target…! So – view the video above and CLICK HERE for the campaign website.

I’ve been involved lately in a project being run by academics and students in my school, the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University, in collaboration with this fantastic performing arts group, NORPA. The project is looking at issues of home and homelessness, and seeking to address the public perceptions of homelessness via a series of “creative investigations”, in whatever form or medium seems most appropriate. Our first foray into this area comes in the shape of an exhibition, “A Place for Everything”, which arises out of film and photography we shot during National Homeless Persons’ week in August 2011. There’s a short video below where I’ve edited together some of the materials.

Our intention is that this first exhibition sets up some ground for future collaborations with community members and organisations. What we’ve done so far is generate some media, build some relationships and gather some community stories around the issues, so our intention is that this can work as the seed for future more theatrical and performance-based public work. So, watch this space…